Audio 2:39
Aboriginal language back from the dead

Nicola GageUpdated
Mon Oct 01 08:41:00 EST 2012

A handful of dedicated people have brought the native Aboriginal language of the Adelaide Plains, Kaurna, back from the dead. The last known fluent speaker died in the late 1900s. Now, dozens of people are being taught the language.

Transcript

TONY EASTLEY: Twenty years ago, not one person spoke the native Aboriginal language of the Adelaide Plains. But a handful of dedicated people have brought the Kaurna language back from the dead.

Nicola Gage reports from south of Adelaide.

(Jack Buckskin speaking Kaurna and English)

NICOLA GAGE: I'm at the Living Kaurna Cultural Centre and 25-year-old Jack Buckskin is teaching people his native language.

JACK BUCKSKIN: We've just been going through the sound system. So we've got words up there for plate, cups, bowls.

NICOLA GAGE: The group is gaining TAFE qualifications in the once-extinct language.

Mr Buckskin says interest in the program has been growing.

JACK BUCKSKIN: Normally there's about six teachers and the teachers come to learn a bit of language, learn the culture, and then take it back to their day schools and teach other students out there, which is good because I'm the only teacher and to raise the awareness of what's happening with the language I need people like this that are keen to learn but keen to teach other people as well.

NICOLA GAGE: Mr Bucksin is also teaching teenagers at Salisbury Highschool in Adelaide's north, where it's become part of the syllabus.

JACK BUCKSKIN: I've probably had 12 enrolments at the start, and a lot of the kids were forced into it. Now a good even 50/50 of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students. There's probably more students chose the language over Italian and stuff now so starting, the students that are out there are learning it, speaking it around the school, so their younger brothers, their friends, are all wanting to come and learn as well.

NICOLA GAGE: Doctor Robert Emery specialises in linguistics at the University of Adelaide.

ROBERT EMERY: Through the language you can learn a lot about culture, you can learn a lot about history. The Kaurna language belongs to this place, to the Adelaide Plains, so it has the kind of vocabulary, the words to talk about the places here, to talk about the environment, to talk about the national species that inhabit this environment.

NICOLA GAGE: The University of Adelaide has received Federal funding to expand its work in reviving the language. That includes the creation of a radio show spoken in native tongue.

Doctor Emery says 20 years ago, he never would have imagined so many people again speaking the language.

ROBERT EMERY: Well we've made a lot of headway, headway that I would never have foreseen. I would have thought for a language in this state it would have been just too hard, but people were inspired, they became interested in the language, and for some people, it's become their whole life.

TONY EASTLEY: Doctor Robert Emery and the quest for reinvigorating a lost language. The reporter, Nicola Gage.